Diana D.'s Top Picks of 2012

Late-night Laughs and Tears

I found I had a lot less time to read this year (thanks to an adorable, yet needy addition to my family), but even more time to listen -- again courtesy of this family member who didn't mind if I listened to some books while we hung out in the middle of the night. There are still so many books that came out in 2012 that I'd like to get to (I'm looking at you, Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel!), but these are my favorites of what I did get to. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Edoardo Ballerini's performance of Beautiful Ruins took the story to a new level for me. And A Fault in Our Stars reminded me (again) that sometimes the best books are written for teens -- and that there's no shame in crying over a good book. Chef Marcus Samuelsson and SNL alum Rachel Dratch had me hooked and laughing (for many different reasons) in their self-narrated memoirs, and apparently I only like fiction with blue covers, as Where'd You Go, Bernadette? rounds out my list and was wonderfully quirky and unexpectedly funny. --Diana D., Audible Editor

Beautiful Ruins

The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying. And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot - searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.

The Fault in Our Stars

Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten. Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw,
The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning-author John Green’s most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.

Yes, Chef: A Memoir

It begins with a simple ritual: Every Saturday afternoon, a boy who loves to cook walks to his grandmother’s house and helps her prepare a roast chicken for dinner. The grandmother is Swedish, a retired domestic. The boy is Ethiopian and adopted, and he will grow up to become the world-renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson. This book is his love letter to food and family in all its manifestations.
Yes, Chef chronicles Marcus Samuelsson’s remarkable journey from Helga’s humble kitchen to the opening of the beloved Red Rooster in Harlem.

Girl Walks into a Bar...: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle

Anyone who saw an episode of
Saturday Night Live between 1999 and 2006 knows Rachel Dratch. She was hilarious! So what happened to her? After a misbegotten part as Jenna on the pilot of
30 Rock, Dratch was only getting offered roles as "Lesbians. Secretaries. Sometimes secretaries who are lesbians." Her career at a low point, Dratch suddenly had time for yoga, dog- sitting, learning Spanish - and dating. After all, what did a forty-something single woman living in New York have to lose?

Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel

Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.

Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle - and people in general - has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands.